>Fewer are willing to admit the culturally-exploratory, finding-yourself vacation experience we read about on a travel blog has pretty much the same level of benefit to society.
Totally lost me on this line. What's the point of being alive if you're not going to have experiences like travel. That pretty much only leaves work as an option to fill you're time.
While I'm mostly in agreement with the rest of the article, I think on this point that cultural exploration does actually benefit society to a degree, because it results in people who are better educated about the world and less xenephobic/racist. If you spent a gap year in a particular country and have friends there, you're much less likely to support a war against that country.
I'd agree that cultural exploration can benefit society by making people more accepting of each other. But I'd like to distinguish it as still being a form of consumption/production since no production is permanently improved. For example, if the person who did the exploration dies, unless they've done something clearly permanent to teach it to their kids or enshrine that learning, the experience will die with them. I feel like many vacations end up in that category, though obviously it's not a universal situation.
I consider it a combination of consumption and education, rather than production per se.
The balance between these two factors depends a lot on the person; someone who goes abroad just to party will have a little bit of cultural immersion but mostly just consume. Someone who goes abroad to seriously learn about a country, learn the language, spend time living there and getting to know the locals, will have more of an education.
Totally lost me on this line. What's the point of being alive if you're not going to have experiences like travel. That pretty much only leaves work as an option to fill you're time.